Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh, the Irish Catholic priest to whom more than
14,000 Cuban-born youngsters owe their American lives, died Thursday of
complications from heart surgery, 41 years almost to the day that he helped
hatch the rescue plan called Operation Pedro Pan.

During nearly a half-century as a priest, Walsh, who was 71, pastored
several South Florida parishes and ran Catholic Charities, the Archdiocese
of Miami's vast human-services network. Under his leadership, it grew
from a $100,000 operation with 11 staff members in 1955 to a small army
of 840 working with a $30 million budget.

Before retiring in 1996, Walsh became deeply involved in interfaith and
interracial dialogues in a community often torn by conflict. He was a
respected champion of immigrants' rights, called to testify before Congress
on the subject.

Those who worked with him on dozens of community boards and panels recalled
Walsh as a pillar of stability in turbulent times: wise, resolute, visionary,
compassionate, and boundlessly tolerant.

"This good Irish missionary priest imitated Jesus' own option for
the poor, the needy and the outcast," said Miami Archbishop John
C. Favalora. "Monsignor was the recipient of so many awards in this
life, surely now he enjoys the longed-for quest of his life: to be with
God forever."

Surrogate Father

Walsh is best known as a surrogate father to thousands of children whose
anxious parents spirited them out of Cuba at the dawn of the Castro regime.
He raised many as his own, later performing their marriages and baptizing
their children and grandchildren.

Two of the doctors who treated him at Mercy Hospital, where he died at
noon of cardiac arrest, were Pedro Pan children.

A pilot in his younger days, the strapping, six-foot-four Walsh remained
an avid sailor, cyclist and traveler who seemed hale and fit even as he
underwent surgery last week to correct a lifelong heart defect.

He received a pacemaker after an episode of difficult breathing, according
to Bishop Thomas Wenski, his successor at the helm of Catholic Charities.
When doctors determined that the pacemaker wasn't sufficient, they opted
to replace two heart valves.

"He knew when the procedure was done he was at high risk,"
said Wenski, among those at Walsh's side in his final moments. "The
surgery was successful but his heart couldn't take the strain. . . . He
was serene at the end. He was a man of great faith and he took on his
passing as he took on life, with faith and courage."

Favalora prayed the rosary with Walsh Thursday morning and administered
the last rites of the Church.

Global Respect

"Few individuals ever achieve his leadership stature in the church
and in the state of Florida," the archbishop said. "He also
enjoyed the respect of the international community."

He was "one of those people you think you'll have forever,"
said Pedro Pan alumna Elly Chovel, a founder of Operation Pedro Pan Group,
Inc., a charity formed to honor Walsh by raising money and volunteering
time for children's services at Catholic Charities. ". . . For the
40th anniversary, he wanted to put everything from Pedro Pan in order.
We gave the archives to Barry University."

The chair for Immigration Studies at Barry was named for him earlier
this year.

"He told me, 'I would prefer to preserve the quality of my life.
. . . The Lord has given me a very good life and when the time comes,
I will be ready to go.' "

'What God Wanted'

Father Arthur Dennison of Broward's St. Andrew's Church, one of Walsh's
closest friends, said Walsh realized his vocation in high school.

"He always believed that's what God wanted him to do," said
Dennison, who accompanied Walsh on a trip up the Shannon River in Ireland
last summer.

He attended seminary in Baltimore and was ordained for the Diocese of
St. Augustine in 1954.

Walsh was the last surviving member of a clandestine group that engineered
the scheme to slip more than 14,000 Cuban children out of Cuba and into
the arms of the Catholic Church in South Florida. The plan coalesced on
Christmas Eve, 1960.

Walsh, with his heavy Irish brogue, was the mission's man in Miami.

Through him, the Catholic Church placed the children in foster care or
orphanages until their parents arrived. In some cases, that took years.

Walsh initially figured the operation would handle 25 children. Instead,
it became one of the largest operations of its kind in the United States.

"Pedro Pan was uncharted territory," noted Wenski. "When
he accepted that responsibility there was no guarantee that there would
be a lot of support."

Indeed, Walsh told the Herald in November, when he was honored by Barry
University for his work, "there were times when I was ready to tear
my hair out. . . . It was just overwhelming. We always debated whether
we were doing the right thing, but we always came back to the same thing:
How can we deny the rights these parents had to seek freedom for their
children?"

Walsh always said the mission worked, proudly ticking off the success
stories of Pedro Pan alumni like U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Mel Martinez; outgoing Miami Mayor Joe Carollo; Eduardo Aguirre, the Bush
administration's pick for vice chairman of the Import-Export Bank, plus
a slew of doctors, accountants, bankers and other professionals.

"I didn't meet him back then," said Martinez, 55, who left
Cuba in early 1962. "He was this big guy we saw walking through the
camp - the big honcho."

Martinez reunited with his parents in 1966.

"In recent years, I went to a Pedro Pan reunion in Miami and met
him and thanked him for giving me an opportunity to be a free man in America
and we became close," said Martinez. "He was at my swearing-in
ceremony in March."

Walsh played a crucial role in South Florida race relations and ecumenical
affairs.

In the years after Miami-Dade was rocked by the May 1980 race riots,
Walsh was among the voices of reason through his work with the county's
Community Relations Board, created to ease tensions.

"Black or white, it didn't matter to him," said activist Athalie
Range, who often found Walsh fighting alongside her. "Monsignor Walsh
was a wonderful man who was involved not just in religious but in civic
affairs in the black community. He was always at the beck and call of
the underprivileged."

Walsh showed "great compassion for the unfortunate, the poor, the
destitute, the unwashed masses. Those who would be rejected by the general
population were embraced by Walsh," said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
R-Miami.

Freedon Fighter

Walsh was "the rare, decent man who was respectful of people of
every religion," said Rabbi Solomon Schiff, executive vice president
of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Miami. "He always spoke
up for freedom for all people, whether they were from Cuba, the Soviet
Union, or Haiti."

Schiff recalled how Walsh spoke at a rally calling for the release of
Soviet Jews "with such passion."

Two years ago, Walsh was honored as the clergy of the year by the Miami
Jewish Home for the Aged, Schiff said.

David Lawrence Jr., former Herald publisher and longtime friend, described
Walsh as a community treasure.

"He was simply one of the best role models I have ever met in my
life," said Lawrence, now president of The Early Childhood Initiative
Foundation. "He had a great sense of humor plus enormous integrity.
He was a progressive human being in the best sense of the word."

'Barrier Breaker'

Arthur Teitelbaum, Anti-Defamation League Southern area director, served
with Walsh on the Dade County Fair Campaign Practices Committee and the
county Bar Association's Special Commission on Judicial Elections.

He called him "a barrier breaker. A healer. . . . I knew him as
a vigorous opponent to bigotry in all its forms. He was a person of strong
principles, which he stated fearlessly and lived by."

Walsh was a key Vatican advisor on refugee affairs, a member of the Pontifical
Commission for Social Development in the 1980s and chairman of the Working
Group on World Refugees Caritas Internationalis, Vatican City, since 1990.

An Intellectual

He also was "a very deep thinker and an intellectual," said
George Volsky, a retired New York Times correspondent now living in Miami.
"He was very well read."

Volsky met Walsh in the 1960s and saw him frequently at a discussion
group that meets every other month to talk about books and world affairs.